Nico Rosberg wins Brazilian Grand Prix, cuts Hamilton’s lead

Nico Rosberg held off his team-mate Lewis Hamilton to win the Brazilian Grand Prix and he cut the lead that his team-mate had on him in the Drivers’ Championship to 17 points heading into the final race of the season at Abu Dhabi on the 23rd of November.

Rosberg had dominated pretty much the entire weekend by topping all the practice sessions and cemented that by qualifying first ahead of the Championship leader, with this victory he also broke Hamilton’s 5 race winning streak and provided some hope for his set of fans that he could win the Formula One championship for the first time and deny Hamilton a second championship.

Two silver arrows away

Similar to the last race held at Austin, both the Mercedes cars headed off right after the race started with Hamilton giving chase to Rosberg. Last time around Hamilton was able to overtake Rosberg during the race and that had taken the wind out of the Rosberg sails, this time the German was on a mission to get the win.

Hamilton stayed right behind Rosberg all throughout the race; his time did come when Nico Rosberg went in to make his second pit-stop. Rosberg pitted on lap 26 and Hamilton was only 2 seconds behind him, he then set the fastest lap of the race, Lewis’ engineers calculated that he needed to set another fastest lap to leap ahead of Rosberg when Hamilton would come into the pits.

His second lap did not go as planned as he got one wheel on the white line while turning at turn 4 which made him miss the corner and he spun, this cost Hamilton 7 seconds and he could not overtake Rosberg for the rest of the race.

Both drivers now head into Abu Dhabi knowing that they need to do their best; Hamilton has to come just behind Rosberg to win the title, while Rosberg needs to win the race and hope Hamilton does not end up behind him after the race. 50 points are up for grabs for the winner while 36 are available for the runner up, all points are doubled in the final race of the season and it will be a race worth watching.

Massa finishes on podium at home race

Felipe Massa was the best of the rest by coming third in his home grand prix. His race wasn’t incident free; he was given a 5 second penalty for speeding in the pit-lane and even ended up in Jenson Button’s pit box when he came in for a stop.

Jenson Button came in fourth to give his McLaren team a bit of a reminder as to what the Brit can do as talks are still on about the future of the former World Champion in the team. Sebastian Vettel came in 5th for Red Bull racing while Fernando Alonso came 6th ahead of his team-mate Kimi Raikkonen in an entertaining duel between the Ferrari team-mates.

Nico Hulkenberg came in 8th for the Force India team, who have confirmed his seat for the upcoming season while Kevin Magnussen came in 9th position as he too is unsure about his future at McLaren, Valtteri Bottas came in a disappointing 10th, the Finn was battling with Button for the 4th and 5th position at the start but two slow pit-stops cost him a lot of time before his performance trailed off towards the end of the race to get the final point of the race.

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